Pérsico joins Pope Francis for a private audience

Deputy Secretary of Family Agriculture Emilio Pérsico and the head of the Workers Confederation of Popular Economy (CTEP in Spanish) Juan Grabois met with Pope Francis during a papal audience at the Santa Marta residency.

According to an official statement by the CTEP, the pontiff and the Argentine leaders “addressed social issues affecting the world, especially the situation of the hundreds of millions that the capitalist system excludes.”

Unemployment, rights of workers’ involved in popular economy projects and the creation of alternatives that allow people’s “comprehensive development” were also among the agenda they discussed at the Vatican. The Pope was reported to vindicate the need to “straighten the unity of Latin America” with the struggle for social justice and popular participation as priorities and mainstays of the current process of regional integration.

Prior to the meeting, the ex Argentine Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio and now head of the world’s 1.2 billion Catholics baptized Néstor Vicente, the son of Emilio Pérsico and Patricia Cubría.

Pérsico arrives in the Vatican a week after a strong controversy stirred up when the Simon Wiesenthal Center urged the administration of President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner to “immediately dismiss” him from office following an Al- Quds rally at a Buenos Aires city mosque where social, political and religious leaders allegedly called for the “destruction of Israel.”